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Aug 29
byMaggie Harrison
/ Artificial Intelligence



[[JOURNALISM]]


USA TODAY OWNER PAUSES AI ARTICLES AFTER BUTCHERING SPORTS COVERAGE

byMaggie Harrison


"THE WORTHINGTON CHRISTIAN [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] DEFEATED THE WESTERVILLE
NORTH [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 IN AN OHIO BOYS SOCCER GAME ON SATURDAY."

Aug 29
Getty Images


"THE WORTHINGTON CHRISTIAN [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] DEFEATED THE WESTERVILLE
NORTH [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 IN AN OHIO BOYS SOCCER GAME ON SATURDAY."


FUMBLE

That was fast.

The Columbus Dispatch, a newspaper serving the Columbus, Ohio area, has
suspended its AI efforts after its AI-powered sports writing bot was caught
churning out horrible, robotic articles about local sports, Axios reports.

The Dispatch — which is notably owned by USA Today publisher Gannett — only
started publishing the AI-generated sports pieces on August 18, using the bot to
drum up quick-hit stories about the winners and losers in regional high school
football and soccer matches. And though the paper's ethics disclosure states
that all AI-spun content featured in its reporting "must be verified for
accuracy and factuality before being used in reporting," we'd be surprised if a
single human eye was laid on these articles before publishing.



Why? Because each formulaic article is riddled with laughably vague statements —
one August 18 article about a football game, for example, described the event as
a "close encounter of the athletic kind" — and repetitive phrasing about
hibernating second halves and which team drew first blood. One article even
failed to populate properly, with the text instead featuring a bracketed glimpse
at how its opening sentence was supposed to read.

"The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville
North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday," reads
the butchered intro. Yikes.


SHORT AND SWEET

The Dispatch's AI efforts were powered by LedeAI, a startup claiming to use
generative AI to offer "lightning-fast" and "easy to read" sports content. (The
firm also goes so far as to declare that its datasets are the "deepest and most
scalable in the world," which feels a bit like slapping an Amazon-purchased
World's Best Coffee sticker onto any old cafe window.)



Another bite of this riveting, well-informed journalism:

"The Steubenville Big Red defeated the Cambridge Bobcats 10-0 in an Ohio boys
soccer game on Saturday," reads one August 19th article. "A suffocating defense
helped Steubenville handle Cambridge 10-0 in Ohio boys soccer on Aug. 19."

That's it. That's the whole post.


SECOND QUARTER HIBERNATION

Gannett has unsurprisingly put a temporary kibosh on the project, telling Axios
that "this local AI sports effort is being paused."

The publisher is "continually evaluating vendors," a spokesperson for the
publisher added, "as we refine processes to ensure all the news and information
we provide meets the highest journalistic standards."

Speaking of journalistic standards? It's worth noting, as Axios did, that this
is the first football season played since Gannett shut down ThisWeek Community
News, an award-winning newspaper collection that documented local area sports.
But in the words of Dispatch's AI itself, may the AI effort enjoy its
"hibernation."



More on AI and journalism: "AI Will Never Replace Journalism," Says Magazine CEO
Replacing Journalists with AI



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